Thicker than Water
by S-Michael
Summary: An ancient chevalier claiming to be Saya and Diva's father has come to claim his grandchildren. How are Kai and the others supposed to defend themselves from him now that Saya is asleep? Whom can they turn to for help? people, seriously: R
1. Chapter 1

Thicker Than Water

**AN:** It's been a while since I've watched Blood, and parts of this story _may_ have been written under the influence of vodka, so…here's hoping for the best. Also, I wrote it out in my notebook before typing it out on Microsoft Word, so the chapters are shorter than I expected—and shorter than I usually write.

Thicker Than Water

S-Michael

Chapter 1

Van Argeno sat in his jail cell, contemplating his complete and utter lack of a future. He had gone into this thing knowing that it was highly immoral and illegal, but to think, he had almost had a hand in wiping out humanity! Even so, he could only think about his own lack of a future, as a real moral sense had never been a part of his character. He had gotten life without the possibility of parole for his part in these experiments. They said he was the ringleader in the media circus that believed the lies they were fed. Argeno was not, of course, but everyone above him in the organization was now dead…they hadn't of really been human. How truly shocking it had been to realize that.

Argeno stared at his shoes and sighed. Oh, what he wouldn't give to be out of here! Suddenly, he heard the lock snap and the door to his cell slid open. He looked up and saw a distinctly familiar-looking teenager opening the door one handed. "Diva?" he demanded, confused and horrified at the same time.

"Do I look like Diva, then?" the teen said in an obviously male voice.

"Yes, actually. What she looks like in her true form, at least…if that _is_ her true form…" Van Argeno trailed off.

"Ah, I see. Mr. Argeno, I heard Diva's song on the air, and I knew it to be what it was—the song of a vrykolake queen," the boy said.

"Vrykolake?" Argeno asked.

"Perhaps you use a different word. It's of no matter. I knew what I heard—what Diva is. And nearby me, there was a young man who was listening to the same station, and he…reacted in quite an interesting way," the boy said. "To make no bones about it, he turned into one of those insults to my species that the media is laying at your feet—somewhat unjustly, I assume. It's not an easy thing, killing a vrykolake without the blood of the queen of his opposite numbers. You have to mix up his organs enough where his own body's attempts to fix itself is what kills him. This country was in its birthing pains the last time I had to do so, so I'm a bit rusty, but I managed to make it _look_ easy, and besides, this boy was a mere mockery of what I am. But this is all getting off the point, I'm afraid.

"For you see, this is the truly interesting thing—that thing the young man turned into, I could smell _my_ blood in it, which is impossible, as my queen is dead, and her sister is dead, although she was carrying my daughters when she died. But then, who knew how long a vrykolake fetus can last, especially preserved by the Icelandic cold and all? So I went to Iceland to solve this little mystery, and you know what I found there? Nothing! The plot thickens, as they say. But whomever robbed my anti-queen's grave did so so long ago that no one remembered him or her, and so, Mr. Argeno, I turn to you. You are going to help me find my daughters."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you die."

Suddenly, the cell didn't seem so bad to Van Argeno.

-

"No one has seen a chiropteran for months," Julia said on the other end of the phone. "I think…I think we can finally say with some safety that we have won the war."

Joel sighed with relief. It was finally over. Time, which had stopped for his family, could move on. The chiropteran threat, which his family had unleashed on the world, was gone, and with it the need for his family to do this duty to the monsters' victims. "That is good news indeed, Julia," was all he said as he wheeled himself into his office.

Someone was there, reading the original Joel's Diary. "You are going to find a convenient excuse to get off the phone," he said. He blinked, and his eyes were glowing blue, making him look alarmingly like Diva. "Or else."

Well, this was new. "Julia, I have a meeting to get to soon, so could you call back later with the details about that? Thank you, bye." Joel knew that he had best see what this stranger wanted, this strange chiropteran. He wished that he was wearing a wire so that he'd still be able to warn others even if this man killed him. "Well, what can I do for you?" Joel asked calmly.

"I found you using records retrieved for me by a very helpful Mr. Argeno. And I found _this_ locked in one of your desk drawers. Quite an…interesting read. You know, if I had met the original Joel, I would have ripped his arms off and beat him to death with them for the way he treated my daughters. After all, what father wouldn't? Don't worry, though—you are not him, and it would be wrong to punish you for his sins. Tell me, do you know the significance of the name 'Saya'?"

"It was the name given to the mummy found in Iceland. Saya was named for it."

"I somewhat resent you referring to her as an 'it,' but that is of no matter. Do you know where the name came from before that? I'll tell you: either it's a coincidence that he got the name right, or your ancestor read her tombstone, which read 'Here lies Saya, daughter of Ishtar, line of Daywalker.' It does not seem that your ancestor was very creative when it came to names."

"There's nothing like that in the diary," Joel said.

"Who are you going to believe—me, or the asshole who performed Nazi-style experiments on my girls? Ah, well, this is of no matter. The point is that Saya Junior and Diva are my daughters."

"Who _are_ you?" Joel asked. He was fairly certain that he'd get an answer—this guy seemed to love the sound of his own voice.

The teenage-looking (but apparently ancient) chiropteran grinned. "Not that it will help you any, but my name is Hiroshi, vassal of Ala, daughter of Ishtar. Well, I _was_ the vassal of Ala, when she was alive, at any rate. She's been dead for two centuries and change. But enough about me—why don't you tell me what became of my children…and grandchildren. And, Joel? I hope for your sake that they're alive."

"Diva's dead and Saya's asleep, but the children can be found here," Joel wrote down Kai's address, hoping he'd get a chance to warn him about this visitor. It wouldn't have done much good to lie, as if this man could track down Joel, he could track down Kai. "Their names are Aoko and Akako, by the way."

Hiroshi sighed. "Thanks. How sad about Diva. Still, I suppose that there's nothing to be done on that front. Congratulations, Joel, I'm going to allow you to live—so long as this address is the real deal."

Hiroshi left. Joel waited for a few minutes, and then, hoping that the ancient chevalier was out of earshot (who could say what capabilities a chiropteran that age had?), dialed a number on his phone. "Hello? We have a problem." To put it mildly.

-

"So let me get this straight: this Hiroshi guy is a chiropteran and claims to be Saya and Diva's father, which would mean he's from the nineteenth century at the latest—"

Kai was interrupted by David: "Joel said that he said something about his queen being two hundred years dead, so he is probably from the eighteenth century, if not before."

"_Thanks._ Anyway, this means he's probably stronger and more experienced than any chevalier we met before, right?"

"Right."

"And this time we don't have Saya to help us, and even if we did, I'm guessing her blood wouldn't work against him, right?"

"We don't know about the blood thing for sure, but otherwise, that appears to be the size of it," David agreed.

"So, then, what do we do?" Kai asked.

"We've tried to get in touch with Haji, and as for waking Saya…well, we don't want another Vietnam on our hands," David said. "Or consciences."

"I think I might be able to get in touch with Haji," Kai said. "I think that he's been visiting Saya's 'grave', and, well, even if I don't see him, maybe I can leave him a note explaining our plight, or something. He might come to our aid, if he reads it."

"It's worth a shot," David said.

"Tell me, honestly—how much is Haji going to be able to help?" said Kai.

"More than not having him around is all I can say," David said.

Two little girls ran into the room, Mao yelling at them. They looked to be about five, and usually acted like it, too. "Now, I never claimed to be an expert on children, David," Kai said dryly, "but I'm pretty sure that these aren't normal one-year-olds. Did Saya and Diva grow up this fast?"

"I don't recall reading anything of the type, but then, that's not what I was looking for the last time I read Joel's diary," David said.

"Their growth might have been affected by their long stasis," Julia said. "It would probably be wrong to assume that Saya and Diva were representative of perfectly healthy chiropterans. After all, the Iceland mummy was clearly chiropteran, is where the word comes from, in fact, but neither Saya nor Diva ever showed evidence of having a 'chiropteran form', if you will."

"And there's another point—what can this Hiroshi do that we've never seen before, that we've never suspected?" Kai asked. He sighed. "Well, we'll find out sooner than we'd like, I'd reckon. Come on, girls! Let's go visit Auntie Saya." The girls cheared.

-

Haji was nowhere to be seen, of course, but Kai found a rose and Saya's tomb. Again. "Haji, if you're out there, I need to speak with you. This is important." Haji did not come to the summons, so either Kai missed him or he just didn't want to talk. Kai sighed, leaving the note weighed down by a rock. "If you can hear me…just read the letter, okay? It explains everything." Kai left, hoping some passerby wouldn't steal it out of curiosity or just plain spite.

Kai loaded the kids in his car and drove home, and as he did so, he had the feeling that he was being watched. But being watched by whom? Was it Haji? Was it this Hiroshi character? Or was it just his imagination? He couldn't tell. When he got home, he was hit by an intense feeling of wrongness. Was it intuition? Was it nerves? "Stay in the car for a moment, girls." Just to be safe (safe, ha!), he drew his weapon and approached his house cautiously. He entered his living room.

"That won't help you," said a strangely-accented voice. Kai swerved towards the source, and saw that he really _did_ look like Saya. Or Diva. "It's funny—this is my country of birth, and yet, I haven't been here in so long that upon arriving here I couldn't make myself understood or understand. I had to ask people to talk to me in English if I wanted to have an intelligent conversation. Can you imagine? Coming to one's country of birth and not being able to speak except in a foreign tongue?"

"You seem to be doing alright now, Hiroshi" Kai pointed out.

"Well, it's not exactly an _entirely_ different language than it was before—I haven't been away _that_ long, or not quite. I was able to put the pieces together, mostly from watching Jepanese television—which sucks, just for the record. I can speak like a modern person now, but I can't seem to get the accent—my subconscious just keeps telling me that the language is supposed to sound like _this_, I guess.

"And I see that you've heard of me," Hiroshi continued. (_Jeez, is he _still_ talking?_ Kai thought. _This guy sure seems to like to run at the mouth._) "You know, I remember when you could slaughter an entire village and no one in the next one over would even notice. Ah, good times. For vrykolakes, at least. But, alas, one cannot live in the past." Hiroshi sighed.

"What do you want?" Kai demanded, hoping to keep him distracted until Haji showed up (which might take hours, but if the ancient chevalier kept talking like this, that _might_ be doable).

Hiroshi shook his head, smiling sadly. "Kai, my boy, if you know who I am, you know what I want. My grandchildren, of course."

"You're not touching the Akako or Aoko," Kai said.

"Oh, and _you're_ going to stop me?"

"If I can."

"Well, let me stop that train of thought there—you can't. Admirable as that sentiment is, though, do you really think, as a mere mortal, you can raise those two charming little bloodsuckers? Can you teach them what they need to know? Can you tell them things like 'don't make a vassal of anyone you care about, because your sister's just going to try to kill him after she mates with him'? Can you teach them how to hunt?"

"They don't need to hunt," Kai said. "We have connections at various bloodbanks."

"Oh, but there's _more_ to hunting than simply a means to gather food!" Hiroshi protested. "See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You don't understand—it's _primal_, my boy. Humans have free will—vrykolakes have biologically-hardwired directives." He moved towards Kai.

"Don't come closer—I'll shoot!" Kai warned.

"And what, exactly, do you suppose that _that_ will accomplish?" Hiroshi mocked.

Kai proceded to pump Hiroshi full of lead, or rather, the incendiary combo that he had used to fight chiropterans. Hiroshi's insides started burning from the inside out, and he doubled over, gasping a surprised "Oh."

Kai reloaded his gun as he ran outside, hoping to reach the car and drive away before Hiroshi recovered—but he was suddenly standing right between Kai and his car. He aimed his gun again.

"That's not going to work again," Hiroshi commented. "You caught me off guard, is all." Kai shot him, anyway, and Hiroshi caught the bullet, showing it to Kai. "Hey, have you ever seen DBZ? Do you remember, the first episode?" A dagger sprouted from his shoulder before he could fling the bullet back at Kai, which would have killed him. Hiroshi looked at the dagger. "Oh, really?" Hiroshi than caught another dagger in midair, and threw it back at it's owner. Haji dodged. "And you would be Saya the Second's vassal, Haji, am I right?" Haji was suddenly next to him, and swung his cello case at Hiroshi's gut, which the ancient one dodged with ease. "Not much of a talker, eh? Very well, then. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, prepare to die, Haji, vassal of Saya, daughter of…well, Saya. Don't worry—she can always make herself another vassal if she feels she needs one." Hiroshi lunged to attack, his eyes glowing blue, and punched.

Haji blocked the blow with his cello case—which cracked. That was the scariest thing of all, really—after all, that thing had been through quite a lot of battles, and hadn't gotten so much as dented or scratched. "Damn!" Hiroshi commented appreciatively. "What's that thing made of?"

"Unobtainium," commented Haji dryly, who didn't usually pause to chat in the middle of a battle, while attacking with his chiropteran arm.

"Funny," commented Hiroshi, dodging the blow. "Tall, Dark, and Handsome has a sense of humor." He swung around Haji and pushed him to the ground, but Haji managed to roll it into a backwards somersault in time to avoid the blow that would have ran him through a few milliseconds later. All Hiroshi ended up with was his fist stuck in the concrete, which, alas, he managed to free before Haji could connect with his next blow, which he then successfully dodged. Haji then tried to claw him again, but Hiroshi bent over backwards, successfully avoiding the blow, planted his hands, and kicked out with both feet in one fluid motion. Haji flew into (and through) one of the walls of Kai's house, and Hiroshi completed the motion by flipping heels over head to land on his feet again.

Kai, who finally had the clean shot he'd been waiting for, fired quickly, but only one bullet hit—Hiroshi dodged the rest, and was on him. "Oh, that was a _big_ mistake, son…_big_ mistake." He ripped the gun from Kai's hand and tossed it into the grass, which was due for a mowing. Before he could do something similar to Kai's head, Haji impaled him. He kicked off of Haji's arm using Haji's body as a springboard, faced him, and as he was healing from the wound said, "Now _that_ was a sucker punch."

Haji came at him again, but this time, Hiroshi grabbed his chiropteran arm in one hand, then his normal arm in his other hand, and then proceeded to defy anatomical science and kick Haji in the head a number of times. Haji's neck snapped, and he fell.

Hiroshi let go of him and stood over his temporarily-broken body. "Hmm, decisions, decisions: now that you're incapacitated, do I just take what I want and leave, or do I kill you while I have the chance? You know, Haji, I've got this distinct feeling—"

"You talk too much!" Kai shouted as he fired another salvo at the ancient chiropteran. The first two bullets hit (which was kind of surprising, given Kai's unintentional warning), but not the rest—including the ignition round.

"Ugh!" shouted Hiroshi. "How _do_ I keep forgetting about you? No matter. I'll just snap your annoying little n—" he couldn't complete the thought, as he had to dodge another one of Haji's attempted impalings. "—neck. God, Haji, I can't leave you alone for one second, can I? Oh, and by the way: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." He went on the offensive, punching once, twice, thrice. Haji blocked the blows, which damaged his cello case further. Hiroshi then snapped Haji's shin with a sharp kick and then hit him with a left, snapping his newly-healed neck again. Haji dropped like a bag of bricks.

Then he was on Kai before the latter could react. "Don't think I didn't know you were going to shoot me again the first chance you got, you sandy little bastard." He ripped Kai's gun from his hand and tossed it again, and then he picked Kai up by his neck and tossed him. Kai hit the wall of his house next to the hole Haji had made when he went through. Kai managed to stumble forward a few steps, and then doubled over, coughing up blood.

Hiroshi turned back to Haji. "Well, he won't be interrupting us anymore. Anyway, Haji…lets see what your insides look like." Before he could connect, a new assailant kicked him off of Haji. Hiroshi reoriented even before hitting the ground and landed on his feet facing his new opponent. "No way," he and Kai said together. He went on alone: "Why, Nathaniel, I haven't seen you since the American Revolution. This is quite a shock, you know. I thought you were dead."

"What can I say? I don't die easily—and I go by 'Nathan' these days."

**AN:** That's right, Nathan's alive! If you were paying attention to the last few minutes of the episode in which he "dies," you'd know that already.

I know that "Akako" is a real Japanese name, but am not so sure about "Aoko." If it's not, it wouldn't exactly be the first time an anime character had a weird-ass name (when was the last time you heard of someone named "InuYasha," after all?), so I'm not too concerned about it. In order to name them, I looked up Japanese baby names on a baby name website, and when I saw the significance behind "Akako," I _knew_ I had to have it for one of the girls—and knew what the other girl's name hade to signify. I stumbled onto "Aoko" by shear luck.

Guess the "meanings" of the girls' names and win. Win what, I don't know, but still, you win…

I'll stop rambling on now.


	2. Chapter 2

Thicker Than Water

**AN:** I sincerely doubt that the next chapter will follow this one as quickly as this one followed the last one, so don't get your hopes up. Also, I've been experimenting with what genres to label this as, as I have a possibly-unfortunate tendency to label anything that's dramatic as a drama.

Thicker Than Water

S-Michael

Chapter 2

"You always did have a flair for the dramatic," Hiroshi said. "How long have you been waiting for the right time to enter the fight?"

"Twenty minutes, which is a while before you arrived. You're losing your touch, Hiroshi," Nathan said.

"Am I? That's too bad. Tell me, would you be the same 'Nathan' who served Diva? I can't believe I didn't make the connection when I was reading about him—I am such an idiot."

Haji got off of the ground, and Nathan put a hand on his shoulder to stay him. "That I am. I am Nathan and Nathan am I."

"How did you trick Diva into thinking you were her vassal?"

"We say 'chevalier' these days, and I did it about how you would expect. I pretended to be human until she gave me some of her blood, which of course had no effect on me. There's a whole big long clever story behind it, but I think it will hold until another day."

Hiroshi actually smirked. "Only you would be able to pull something like that off, Nathaniel. After all, you'd only have the one shot."

"Well, to be fair, they weren't exactly on the look out for rogue chevaliers," Nathan said modestly, though modesty wasn't in his character.

"Yes, you'll _defineitely_ have to tell me about it sometime—assuming we're both alive. Right now, though, my question is, why did you never try to reconcile Saya and Diva? You were their mother's vassal—raising them would traditionally have been your responsibility."

"Oh, every group of chiropterans has its own traditions. But yes, I would have tried, if there had been any chance of reconciliation when I found them. The die had been cast, as they say. It's not like our species is known for its sisterly love, you know."

Hiroshi sighed. "There's the sad and sorry truth. The next generation will have to do better, if the species is going to survive with more than a single representative from generation to generation."

"Perhaps it would be best to leave them with a human to rise, then," Nathan suggested.

Hiroshi snorted. "Yes, because Joel did _such_ a bang-up job."

"Joel was a douchebag," Nathan retorted. "Kai, on the other hand, seems to be doing a pretty damn good job."

"I'm taking the kids," Hiroshi said, cutting off the direction that this conversation was going with finality.

"Do you think you can take Haji and me at the same time?" Nathan asked incredulously.

"If I have to," Hiroshi said.

"You'll lose. I've had more exercise over the last century than you have, you've been injured in this fight, and it's two against one."

"I don't care."

"I doubt that your own safety is all that important to you right now, but what about the children? Should this _really_ be happening where they could get hurt?" Suddenly, as if to underscore his words, there were gunshots.

"_Again?_" Hiroshi demanded when a bullet hit him, glaring at David who had just arrived.

"See? This is _exactly_ the sort of thing I was talking about." Nathan added cheerily.

"Fine, then," Hiroshi said. "You've won this round, but you have to sleep sometime, though. Not literally, of course, but you know what I mean." He jumped away, clearing a few treetops.

-

How can you not be dead?" David demanded. "Saya killed you with her blood."

"And if I were Diva's chevalier in truth, that would mean something," Nathan said.

"What are you even doing here?" Haji asked.

"Keeping track of Aoko and Akako, of course—and Kai, too. My plan was to wait until all of you were dead and then trick the blue-eyed girl—that one's Aoko, right?—into taking me on as her chevalier, but alas, that's out of the bag now."

"Why Aoko? Why does it have to be the blue-eyed girl?"

"Because my eyes glow red. Duh. I want to fit in with my fellow chevaliers, don't I?" Nathan asked rhetorically.

David called Julia at the hospital, worried. "How's Kai?"

"He has a mild concussion and a few cracked ribs. All things considered, he's lucky," Julia said. "He ought to be out in little more than a week."

"Thank you, Julia. Love ya, bye," David said and hung up. "So I take it that you're going to be on _our_ side this time, Nathan?"

"Sure, I guess," said Nathan He shrugged. "After all, I've got nothing better to do."

David nodded, knowing that he'd have to accept that, since they'd do a lot better with Nathan than without. "What are we going to do about this Hiroshi person?"

"Keep an eye on the kids," Nathan said. "After all, what else is there _to_ do?"

David narrowed his eyes. "The way you said that makes me think that there _is_ something else that we can do," he said.

"Why, David, I'm insulted!" Nathan said totally unconvincingly. He then sidled up to Haji and groped him. "Anyway, Haji, watching the kids should be your responsibility. Lord knows you could use some human contact." Nathan pecked him on the cheek and walked slowly away.

David protested, "But—"

"Haji, check your pockets. You'll find my card in there somewhere. Haji ought to be able to distract Hiroshi long enough for someone to hit my number on their cell phone. I mean, come on, Hiroshi's powerful, yes, but he's not God."

"Was there a point to that trick?" David called after him.

"Yes there was," Nathan said. "It's called 'having a cheap excuse to glomp Haji.'"

-

Nathaniel's behavior was what confused Hiroshi the most. Not his pretending to be Diva's vassal, as, after all, a vassal needed a queen to serve, even if he was a fairy, and it was only natural for a vrykolake whose liege was dead to seek out her nearest relative to serve. Hiroshi didn't doubt that Diva and Saya were truly irreconcilable, as if they weren't, he'd have managed to maneuver them into it somehow. What confused Hiroshi was, of course, Nathaniel's behavior _now_. After all, the duty of raising the children usually fell to the queen's vassals (if the queen's sister lived, she had a tendency to kill her mate so that he couldn't use the opportunity to kill her, and if the queen's sister was dead, she inherited her vassals, and so the father was hers, anyway—Hiroshi's queen had been alive, but he'd been one of the lucky few to escape with his life), and Nathaniel had been the vassal of the original Saya and pretended to be the vassal of Diva. Shirking duty like this was rare indeed amongst vrykolakes. Vrykolakes did not have as much free will as humans—the vassal was the slave of his queen, right down to the very essence of his soul.

Nathaniel found the broken-down castle he'd been searching for in the Carpathians Mountains. He climbed one of the few intact parapets with catlike ease.

"What do you want?" cried a voice in old-fashioned Romanian.

"I need your help, Vlad," Hiroshi called in the same language.

"I'm not interested."

"You haven't even heard what I have to say yet."

"I'm not interested in anything you have to say," Vlad called. "Don't you understand? We. Are. Extinct! Our _species_ is no more! All that remains is a handful of poor, broken ex-slaves, who did not have the strength to kill themselves when their queens died and they'd outlived their purpose. We're a bunch of fools, clinging to the past, or else pretending that what we are now has purpose, trying to forget what it was like to have true meaning."

"That is truly sad, Vlad. Truly, truly sad, coming from you. Back in your mortal days, you were feared by enemies and allies alike, which is why your queen found you, but you were so much your own person that you rebelled against your own vrykolake blood and slew your own master, and this made you a legend amongst us, something to be feared. Tell me, Vlad, is it _really_ the extinction of the species that you never wanted to be a part of that has driven you to isolate yourself, or is it simply the fact that things have changed so much and are changing with such speed that you cannot keep up?"

"And tell me, Hiroshi Ala Ishar the Daywalker, what is it that keeps _you_ ticking throughout all these years? How do you ignore the hollowness in your heart, how do you ignore the hole left when you have no master to serve? Humans are ill-designed for immortality, and so are vrykolakes, truth be told. We aren't meant to live forever, we're meant to die protecting our queens, usually from their sisters. What a lovely species we are, Daywalker—the queen tries to kill the vassal who impregnates her and then, if not ripped from her womb, the children try to kill their mother from the inside out, and they go on to try to kill one another."

"Yes, we're messed up, but we have only the one species, and it is in our nature, so we have to live with it. 'My country, right or wrong,' if you will," Hiroshi said. "To answer your question, I just get by. It helps to keep busy, and one can never be busier than trying to keep up with the times, but the pain never goes away. Still, either one can live with it, or one can't—the choice is simple. As you haven't ripped out your own guts with your bare hands, I must assume that means that you think you can. Until recently, I just got by by getting by—I say 'until recently' because, and you'd know this if you had been watching TV any time during the last year, we are _not_ extinct! I have searched and I have found two queens—sisters, less than a year old, and they're being raised by _humans_, of all things."

"What do you need my help for?" Vlad asked. "You ought to be able to deal with _humans_."

"Nathaniel Saya Ishtar and another vassal by the name of Haji Saya Saya stand in my way. Haji's less than a century old, I'd wager anything on it, but I can't fight him and Nathaniel at the same time.

"Sounds like a family affair to me," said Vlad, who was familiar with the Daywalker line's naming convention and furthermore knew that Nathaniel and Hiroshi had been opposite numbers.

"Haji knows nothing of the ways of the vrykolakes, and as for Nathaniel…I don't know _what_ his problem is. The girls are my grandchildren, Vlad. I couldn't be their for their mothers, and now one of them is dead."

Vlad sighed. "Fine, I'll come with you."

"I thank you, Vlad Idrina Szuszanna," Hiroshi said.

"My line never used that sort of name," Vlad said. Hiroshi began to leave. "Wait! We're not _all_ day walkers, like your blessed family, you know."

"I know. I'm going to make preparations. We'll leave at sunset."

-

"Alright, I'm fairly certain that Hiroshi has temporarily left the city, hopefully the nation," Nathan said. "It's time to go get our secret weapon."

"Left for where?"

"_What_ secret weapon?"

Nathaniel sighed, clasping Haji's shoulder. "Humans, eh?"

"I _really_ wish you wouldn't do that," Haji said.

"Aw, you're no fun," Nathan complained. "Anyway, to business: Hiroshi's gone to get backup. We do have some advantages here. Do you remember how the Schiff would burn up if they were touched by sunlight? Well, that's the case with most of us—our own particular bloodline is just lucky. Still, it's rather fascinating that we retain those genes…but that's not here nor there. Our secret weapon is that we're going to wake Saya up."

"We tried something like that in Vietnam…" Julia reminded him.

"Yes, you did, and you failed spectacularly. But, amateurs that you are, you did it wrong. Until I joined up with Amshel and the others, I didn't even know that the sleeping cycles even _had_ a natural end—we'd been waking our queens up after letting them recharge for a few months, or else alternating one queen awake and the other asleep, since time immemorable, and they've never been the worse for it," Nathan said.

"So then, what is the sleep cycle? Some sort of defect?" Julia asked.

"Perhaps," Nathan said. "We are a species that reproduces exclusively through aunt-on-nephew incest, after all. Or perhaps it is a way to keep queens from trying to kill one another, by making neither one awake when the other is, although that does not seem to work all that well. Or perhaps, in a time when humans didn't move around so much and chiropterans didn't, either, people would notice if a sixteen-year-old stayed sixteen for decades at a time, but did not live long enough to be able to connect the dots of what was happening now with stuff that happened thirty years ago."

"But what of the chevaliers, then? In that last scenario, I mean," Julia asked.

"What of them? They're expendable, alas, the plight of my gender. A queen can always make more chevaliers, after all."

"Is any of this true, or are you just pulling our legs?" David asked.

"Let's just say…it _could_ be true," Nathan said. "The point is, however, that there is a way to wake Saya and not have her go off and kill everyone in sight."

"Question," Kai said. "Not that all this we-can-wake-Saya stuff _isn't_ something we could really have done with knowing earlier, but, well, is Saya really that much stronger than Haji? To be able to fight Hiroshi, I mean."

"No, it isn't that," Nathan said. "The secret weapon isn't her strength, it's the fact that she's his daughter, and so he will not want to hurt her. Come on, Kai, you're a parent—you know this. And this gives us an advantage, in this respect."

And so they went to Saya's tomb.

"Alright, here's what we're going to do. First, Haji, peel that chrysalis off of her. We'll be here all day if we watch the humans do it, not that that wouldn't be entertaining, and I don't want to get _my_ hands dirty." Haji complied without a word, breaking away Saya's cocoon. Nathan sighed. "If only you accepted my passes that easily." Nathan took off his coat and handed it to David. "I don't want to get it dir—hey!" David was wraping Nathan's coat around Saya."

"What? You want us to leave her naked?" David asked.

"But I just said that I _didn't_ want it to get dirty, and now it's covered with cocoon gunk," Nathan complained. "Oh, fine, but at least do it right." Nathan dressed Saya in his coat and then pinned her arms behind her back. "As I was saying before David ruined my coat, I need to restrain her while Haji slits is wrist and feeds her his blood—don't do it _yet_, Haji, I need to explain it first, as I'll be too busy mind-singing to her to talk. Now, then, after that's done, I need Kai to let her drain him from the neck.

"What?" Kai demanded."

"What? I thought you heteros were into that sort of kinky stuff," Nathan said.

"We're not performing a human sacrifice," David said with finality.

"Oh, fine, coat ruiner," Nathan said. "Seriously, though, I'm going to pull her off of Kai before she does any permanent damage." He smiled at Kai. "Don't you trust me?"

"Now that you mention it…no," Kai said. "In fact, if you told me that the sun rises in the east, I'd ask for a second opinion. Is there any other way?"

"This works best with a human she knew, but if you want to experiment…I didn't think you did, not after Veitnam…"

"Alright, fine. But if I die, I'm going to kill you," Kai said. With that logically impossible threat out of the way, he tossed his own coat aside and said, "Lets do this."

"Indeed," Nathan smirked. "You heard the man, Haji: lets do this."

Haji slit his wrist and pressed it into Saya's mouth. The blood went down her thoat, and for a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, her eyes opened, glowing red, and she began to worry at the wound like a dog with a bone. Haji pulled away, and Saya let out an inhuman screech. Nathan maneuvered her over to Kai, and then she bit his neck, and she drank, and drank, and drank…

"Nathan?" Kai demanded. Then: "_Nathan??_"

"One more minute," Nathan retorted.

"A minute?" I don't think I'll last that long!"

"We have to do this right, or else—"

Suddenly, Saya relented. "Kai?" She asked. "What…what's going on?"

**AN:** You know, I dreamed up a back story for Hiroshi, at least in outline, but now that the story is all written out, I realize that I never actually go into it during the course of the actual fanfic. Ah, well—such is life. If you're interested, however, I _will_ tell you that he escaped from Japan as a child with his mother on one of the first Dutch ships to reach the islands, that he was in Holland when he was found by Ala Ishtar (his queen, duh—hence his being called Hiroshi Ala Ishtar), and that he was in one of the 13 colonies at the time of the American Revolution. He has since adopted the country as his own (not so much like he's a patriot, more like a personal plaything), and he has spent much of the last two centuries there and owns a flat in NYC.


	3. Chapter 3

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

Chapter 3

S-Michael

"That was less than a minute," Nathan observed. "You can let her go now."

Nathan uncertainly loosened his grip. "I've never seen one come around this quickly," he said, awed. He hadn't of i_ntentionally_ trying to kill Kai, but he had thought he was putting his life in some danger. Apparently not, though. Nathan winked at Kai: "I think she likes you," he teased.

"Hey, Nathan: shut up," Kai retorted not-so-snappily.

"_Nathan?_" Saya demanded, twisting out of his grip and facing him. "But…you're dead. I killed you."

Nathan's eyes widened in mock-horror. "Am I? Did you?" He looked down at himself; "Eek! A ghost!"

"Apparently, he wasn't really Diva's chevalier, just a chevalier who happened to be in Diva's service, and so your blood had no effect on him," Kai explained.

"But…how is that possible?" Saya asked.

"You and Diva didn't form spontaneously from the waves like Aphrodite, you know, in spite of all appearances to the contrary," Nathan said patronizingly.

"But…Kai…you're still young," Saya protested. Her head was still full of grogginess from the long sleep, but she was beginning to come to several realizations. "Wasn't I supposed to be asleep for thirty years? How did you awaken me?" Then she paused, and then she came out with the _really_ important question: "_Why_ did you awaken me?"

And so they explained the situation to her.

"Alright, Saya, you're going to have to lay low," said Nathan. "Hiroshi might have guessed that we'd do this, and then again, he might not have—and if he doesn't know that we figured out that he left or that we decided to awaken you the first real chance we get, I'd like to keep it that way for as long as possible. The longer we're able to play our cards close to the chest, the better our chances."

"You said he went to get help…get help from where?" Saya asked. "Also, who, exactly, put you in charge?"

"To answer the first question first, there's a few oldtimers left, chevaliers who for one reason or another did not want to die after their queens and anti-queens did, such as yours truly. In my case, I guess that I was partially shielded by my sexuality, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the same is true of the others. As for your second question, no one did, but I am the only one who truly understands what Hiroshi can do, how he thinks, and what he's likely to do," Nathan explained. "Now then, If there's anything you wnt to do before you go into hiding with me, do it quickly. We don't know when Hiroshi will return."

"Hide out…with you?"

"Saya, honestly, how likely do you think it is that _I'm_ going to try to molest you?" Nathan asked.

"…I need some clothes," Saya said. "And a hair cut."

They left the tomb as the sun was lowering towards the horizon. It was still entirely above the horizon, but that would end soon, and the sky and Okinawa were already colored with the brush of sunset. Nathan had wanted to bring only Kai and Haji along, as they were all that he had needed, but David and Julia had insisted that they came along, both so that they'd know what to do next time and just in case something happened. Nathan had pointed out that there was nothing that they could do if something _did_ happen, but after a couple of hours of arguing about it they didn't budge, and so Nathan agreed, time getting short and all. Mao had to stay with the girls, however, so that if anything _did_ happen, there'd be an adult with them who could drive them out of Okinawa. Fast.

Haji and Nathan flanked them like a pair of bodyguards as they walked home. When they arrived at Kai's house, the girls were playing around the house. Saya stared at her nieces for a moment before comprehension set in. "I thought you said that I was only asleep for a year," she said as Akako and Aoko ran back around the side of the house.

"They're growing fast," Kai commented as they entered.

Saya protested: "But I never aged that fast!"

"The prevailing theory is that you and Diva were stunted in your development because of…well, your mother being dead long before you were born and all," Kai explained. "You know, now that we have Nathan here, we ought to ask him about that; he could no doubt shine some light on chiropteran physiology that we can only guess at. Anyway, come on in and lets get you dressed. Mao won't mind you borrowing some of her clothes."

They went in. Saya went into the master bedroom, dressed, and emerged. "So…you and Mao…"

"Yeah. We've been together for, well, most of the last year, I guess. C'mon, let's cut your hair."

Saya sat, relaxed, and let Kai get to work. "So I guess that means you're pretty serious, then, right?" Then: "Ow!"

"Sorry, knot," Kai explained. Saya relaxed again. "To be honest…I'm not sure how serious we are. Still, who else could possibly understand what I've been through, you know? Don't get me wrong, it's not like that's the only thing keeping us together—far from it!—but it _is_ a consideration. One has to have someone to talk to about these things or they go crazy, you know what I mean?

"I see," Saya said.

"What is it?" Kai asked.

"What is what?" Saya asked, confused.

"It seemed like something was bothering you, is all," Kai said.

"Hmm," Saya shrugged. "I'm famished," she changed the subject.

"It's getting about dinnertime. Why don't you join us?" Kai asked. Before she could answer, Kai went to the back door and shouted: "Mao, I'm home! Girls, come meet your Aunt Saya!"

The two little girls ran into the room. "You're not Aunt Saya. Aunt Saya's dead," Akako declared upon meeting her aunt, Saya.

"I _am_ Saya," Saya protested. "I wasn't dead—I was just sleeping."

"People don't sleep in graves," the little girl opined.

"I'm special," Saya said, leaving it at that because she was not sure how much Kai had told the girls about their rather unique heritage. "So, what are your names?

Mao entered as she asked this, having walked at a leisurely pace while the girls seemed to have only two speeds: fast and faster. She didn't seem very happy, but Saya was distracted by her nieces at the moment.

"I'm Akako," said Aoko.

"I'm Aoko," said Akako.

"Girls," Kai said sternly. The red-eyed girl admitted to being Akako and the blue eyed girl admitted to being Aoko.

"How lovely," Saya said. "Let's go eat." The girls shouted their hoorays and went into the kitchen.

"They eat as much as you do," Kai warned.

"I'll bet," Saya grinned.

The five of them ate, the two girls not noticing the silence of the adults (Saya and Kai had both picked up on the vibe coming off of Mao by now), and then it was time for them to go to bed. The adults were now alone, and they could talk freely about what was bothering Mao. "Tell me, Kai," said Mao, "did you even _think_ to ask me before you lent my clothes to Saya?"

"Are you telling me you would have said no?" Kai asked.

"Of course I wouldn't have, but _that's not the point!_" Mao retorted.

"Well, come on, she couldn't have been standing around without clothes on all day," Kai pointed out.

Mao winced. "_Please_ don't remind me that you saw her naked, Kai. I'm trying very, _very_ hard not to think about that, because if I do…I just might hit you, Kai. I just might."

"Look, I'm sorry about the clothes, Mao. I just didn't think, I guess," Kai apologized.

"It's not like I was out of town or anything. You could have just shouted out the back door. I was watching the kids. I was watching them while _you_ were out getting your neck gnawed on by your sister."

Kai's hand went involuntarily to his bandaged neck, and Saya winced. Nathan, being Nathan, hadn't told any of them what he was planning beforehand, but Mao knew that Kai hadn't of been injured before they left and was now, and she could add two plus two just as well as anybody could.

"That wasn't fair," Kai said softly.

Mao sighed. "I know it's not, Kai. It's just…damn it, Kai, would you at least _try_ to think? As much as I like being able to talk to Saya again, and I'm just as thrilled as anybody that she's back, you know that I've always suspected you and her of having a thing, you know that I'm jealous, and you damn well know that I've never thought that I could measure up to her, not since before all that nastiness with the chiropterans started. So, could you _please_ try not to unduly aggravate my jealousy, would you?"

Saya was amazed. This was a different Mao than she had known, a more open Mao. "I mean no offense," Saya said, "but have you been seeing a counselor?"

"We've been playing counselor to one another," Kai said, squeezing Mao's hand and gazing at her affectionately. "Sorry about all that, Mao. I guess that I'm just an idiot sometimes."

Mao grinned back, "I'll say you are."

In that moment, Saya knew that whatever they had, however serious, be it for the short term or the long haul or somewhere in between, they definitely had _something_, and that something was real…why did she suddenly feel a pang of loss?

-

Hiroshi, his descendants (Saya Junior, Diva Saya, Aoko Diva, and Akako Diva),and his "cousin" Nathaniel were all of the line of Daywalker, which made them…well, daywalkers. Vlad, however, was not, and so special considerations had to be made, as he'd burn up like the Schiff if exposed to direct sunlight (Vlad had read the reports that Argeno had given him, and found it interesting that his line must still carry that latent gene). Daywalking had been a very useful ability amongst the vrykolakes, and must surely have helped in Saya and Diva's surviving to be born—after all, if the corpse of the elder Saya had gone up in flames after being exposed to a little sunlight…

Well, once again, Vlad wasn't a daywalker, and so, once again, special considerations had to be taken. Hiroshi knew on an intellectual level that he was "lucky" to be a daywalker (if one could consider it to be lucky to have been turned into a vrykolake at all), but dealing taking these special considerations really made Hiroshi appreciate simply being able to walk outside on a sunny day. Thank God for small favors, he guessed (or maybe the kami, but Hiroshi had been smuggled out of Japan with his mother as a small child on one of the first ships leaving for Holland, and so never really knew all that much about kami). In spite of the frustration inherent in trying to find a light that would take them from Romania to Japan in less than one night, he did manage to smuggle Vlad into the country (after getting him a fake ID and passport).

He hoped that Nathaniel hadn't of noticed his absence, as he'd probably use it to awaken Saya Junior, and Hiroshi didn't want to get into a battle with his own daughter—some fights you lose even if you win. Well, it was a chance he had to take: either he called in some reinforcements, or else this stalemate went on indefinitely. So he took a risk. There was no use in flabbing about it now.

There was Nathaniel, and Haji was with him. They were standing outside of Kai's front door, like a pair of sentries. Hiroshi nodded at Vlad, and they made themselves known. No need to be melodramatic—they simply walked down the street.

"Tell me, Nathaniel, and be honest—did you even notice that I was gone?" Hiroshi asked. Nathaniel was going to lie, of course, but how he lied would tell Hiroshi where the truth was.

"Just in the nick of time, it seems—we just woke Saya earlier today," Nathaniel said, which of course meant that he had done no such thing.

Hiroshi laughed. "You always had a flair for the dramatic, Nathaniel—and it makes itself obvious in the way that you lie."

"Of course, I _could_ be telling you the truth, knowing that you wouldn't believe me," Nathaniel retorted. He wouldn't have mentioned that if it were true…well, maybe.

"Well, I guess that that's just a chance I'll have to take," Hiroshi said.

"So does that mean we're actually going to do this thing? You can still give up and go home, you know," Nathaniel said. "The kids are inside sleeping. Don't want to wake them up with our racket, do you? Or causing the roof to collapse on them?"

"Hmmm…well…in that case, I say…" lines like spider silk shot form hiroshi's fingers and attached themselves to Haji, and with a solid yank Hiroshi sent Saya Junior's vassal flying down the street, "…we'll just have to make an effort to not cause property damage."

"Hiroshi! That was beneath you!" Nathaniel said with mock severity. "Ah, well—you're cute when you're being petty."

Hiroshi opened his mouth to retort (his line would have been "Flattery will get you nowhere") when Nathaniel attacked. Damn that sneaky bastard! Hiroshi managed to dodge (barely) and ran to the now-unguarded door—where he got impaled. Amazing: It was like looking in a mirror, except that she was female and that her eyes glowed red instead of blue. His queen's eyes, passed on to her through him. There was a draw to them, an urge to be lost in them. Hiroshi didn't suffer from autogynephilia—a vassal without a queen was drawn to any queen he could find, and the closer their relation, the better.

Hiroshi successfully resisted the primal urge to submit, and shouted at Vlad in Romanian: "Take Nathaniel! Haji and Saya Junior are mine!" as he didn't want Vlad to hurt Saya. Then, in Japenese: "You do realize, of course, that your blood has no effect on me, right?"

"Force of habit," for Saya _had_ bloodied her sword before attacking him.

Hiroshi un-impaled himself by jumping backwards, and then gracefully dodged one of Haji's blows. "Come on, son, you can do better than that!" he taunted.

Haji looked pleadingly at Saya, who nodded, and then Haji said to Hiroshi: "As a matter of fact, yes, I can." Wings sprouted from his back and both of his arms were now monsterous instead of just one. Hiroshi was surprised to see that his transformation consisted of nothing more than that.

Hiroshi shook his head and grinned. "Haji Saya Saya…you remind me of a young me," he said. Instead of clarifying what he meant by this, he added: "Bring it!" signaling for him to come. Haji charged at much greater speed than he had before, and Hiroshi judo-tossed him. Then a bullet came flying by his head. "Oh, _bad_ idea, punk!" he shouted, turning on Kai. No more Mr. Nice Guy: Hiroshi ran through—Saya, who had blocked the blow which was meant for Kai with her body. She would be alright, provided that Hiroshi didn't mess with her internal organs while he was in there (which of course he wouldn't) and that she got some blood in her soon, but it would have killed Kai.

"Really?" Hiroshi asked the question like a professor asking a grad student to explain a rather perplexing hypothesis they came up with. "He's _that_ important to you?"

Saya looked at him with the face so very much like his own and the glowing red eyes, and in a voice filled with defiance and the pain frm the blow he had accidentially inflicted on her, said: "Yes. That important, and more."

Vlad stared at her for a second, forgetting that his arm was still inside of her, and then backed himself out of her. "Okay," he said. He switched to Romanian: "Vlad! We're calling this off!"

"Are you _serious?_" Vlad demanded.

"Of course I am," Hiroshi retorted, still in Romanian.

"If you say so, but still, I can't believe you brought me all the way to Japan for _this_," and with that Vlad flew off.

Hiroshi took off his shirt, which was covered with Saya's blood, and then wiped what was left of her blood on him on the non-bloody parts of said shirt. "Okay. If you have that sort of faith in him…I guess that I'm going to have to trust your judgment."

"That's _it?_" Kai demanded incredulously.

"Would you prefer I tried to impale you again, kid?" Hiroshi asked. He tossed the bloody garment to the ground, forgotten, having gotten himself clean. "One more thing before I leave, though…" and then he suddenly punched Haji through the gut. "A parting gift for you, my friend." And with that he was gone.

"We need blood for these two," Nathan immediately said to Kai.

"Go to our fridge," Kai said. "There's lots of it."

Nathan nodded and returned momentarily with the blood. He gave Saya a bag and Haji a bag, and they tore in.

"I _can't_ believe that that's it," Kai said.

"Oh? So you _are_ smarter than you look," Nathan said. "Of course, you'd have to be. Yes, he is _definitely_ up to something."

"Stop being a smart ass and tell us what you know," Kai retorted.

"Alright, then: he did two things that were very out of character for him. The first thing was that he changed his mind. Hiroshi Ala Ishtar is one of the most stubborn sons of bitches I have ever met. He does _not_ change his mind once he has made it up. The second was the parting shot. Heroshi has many characteristics that humans would term character flaws, but pettiness isn't one of them. Sure, he'll fight dirty in order to win, but once the fighting is done, it is _done_. Did you notice how immaculately he cleaned himself after he ran Saya through, but that he didn't do anything after running Haji through? He wants Haji's blood for something," Nathan deduced.

"What could he possibly use Haji's blood for?" Saya asked.

"Not the slightest clue," Nathan admitted. They stared at him. "What? How should I know? I'm not a mind reader, after all."

-

Van Argeno had been busy these past weeks at work on what Hiroshi reffered to as "Plan B." His background at Cinq Fleche prepared him well for this, and yet it was actually easier than anything he'd done for the company. While Hiroshi was reading everything Argeno could get him on his former employers, they found some samples of Diva's flesh and a few vials of her blood, which Hiroshi decided that they would steal.

Phase one of Plan B was for Argeno to clone a sample of bone marrow. Argeno had told Hiroshi that he needed special equipment, and Hiroshi had gotten it for him. How, Hiroshi had never volunteered and Argeno had never asked, not being one to sweat legalities himself. There were large spans of days while Hiroshi was gone tracking down his daughters, but Argeno never made an attempt to escape. For one thing, he was sure that Hiroshi could track him down. For another…the work he was doing was fascinating.

The bone marrow was growing phenomenally when Hiroshi came in carrying a comatose man and announced what step two was: Argeno was to replace the man's marrow with Diva's, as one would to treat leukemia. ("He's completely braindead," Hiroshi had said. "Not that _you_ care, of course. Still, I thought we'd do better with a blood factory that didn't scream and cry and try to escape.") He didn't use all the grown marrow, however, as they might have to start this over again with another subject—Hiroshi thought that it might be possible that the marrow would destroy any body that wasn't already turned into a chevalier, and that they'd have to find another braindead vegetable and inject it with Diva's blood before replacing its marrow. Argeno did not think that this scenario was likely, but agreed with the wisdom of conserving resources.

Hiroshi walked in, and began to wring blood off of his arm into a Petri dish. "Hey, how's it hanging with JD?" he asked in English, which seemed to be the language he was most comfortable with. JD was what they were calling the vegetable—John Doe. Also, apparently, it was also the name or nickname of the star of some American medical comedy.

"I was just about to compare blood samples," Argeno said.

"Excelent!" Hiroshi said. "Time for me to check it myself. He picked up a scalpel, cut JD just enough to bloody it (JD's wound healed in less than a second), and he flicked a tiny droplet off of the blade into the Petri dish. Haji's blood crystallized. "Well, _that_ certainly looks promising. What does the science say, doc?"

Argeno had been comparing a sample of Diva's blood to a sample of JD's. The computer beeped, as if on cue, and Argeno read what it reported. "Perfect match. It worked perfectly—JD is now producing Diva's blood."

Did it bother Van Argeno that he had just turned another human being (well, a former human being) into a blood factory at the bequest of an inhuman monster? He thought about it, and came to the conclusion that no, it really didn't. At least this particular monster wasn't planning to destroy humanity. He hoped. Argeno sometimes questioned nature's wisdom in creation chiropterans, as everything about their biology and behavior flew in the face of Darwinian common sense.

"Oh, and Mr. Argeno…"

"Yes?"

"If you try to finish that little deal you made last year by turning JD's blood into Delta 67 and related products, I shall be annoyed. You don't want me to be miffed at you, Van. You follow me?"

"Crystal clear," Argeno assured the ancient chiropteran.

"Good," Hiroshi said. He drew some of JD's blood with a syringe, and studied it in the light. "It is time for some human testing." What Argeno was thinking must have been clearly printed on his face, because Hiroshi laughed. "Don't worry—it's not going to be you. Although, if you want to live forever, by all means, be my guest. Oh, I have someone _else_ in mind for the human trials…"

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Argeno asked.

"You just did," Hiroshi pointed out. "Go ahead."

"Why did we do this? What do you want Diva's blood for? I don't _think_ you intend to crystallize Saya—do you?" Argeno asked. He wasn't actually concerned about Saya's fate, but he was curious as to the motive behind what he had done.

"Oh, heavens no!" Hiroshi said as he filled a blood bag with JD's blood. "Mr. Argeno, it is time for you and JD here to hide. I've already made travel arrangements for you, an appointment with a plastic surgeon, and a nice little lump sum for you to live on until I next need you. I don't think I need to tell you not to run off or to guard JD with your life, as I will find you." He had filled the blood bag. "This is more than plenty. As I was saying, Mr. Argeno, I'm relying on you to take care of JD and the rest of my stuff. Godspeed. Oh, and that offer about immortality is an open offer, so if you ever feel like sticking some vrykolake blood in your veins, be my guest. Godspeed, Mr. Argeno."


	4. Chapter 4

Thicker Than Water

Thicker Than Water

S-Michael

Chapter 4

"Are you still sure that Hiroshi is planning something?" Kai asked. It had been a couple of weeks, and there was still no sign of Hiroshi. It was a gray, overcast day, and Kai had to get to work. Still, he was running a few minutes early, and Nathan was right there, so he asked the question.

Nathan nodded. "You have to remember not to think of him as a typical enemy," he said. "He's not trying to steal the girls because he wants to perform experiments on them or something cartoony like that. He's trying to do it because he does honestly care for them and equally honestly believes that you, mere mortal that you are, cannot be trusted to raise his grandchildren correctly."

"Maybe Saya convinced him of my worth when she took the blow for me," Kai suggested.

"Not likely," Nathan opined. "After all, what does she know? She was raised by humans and has been force-fed your human propaganda, the poor deluded thing. Not to mention, he might or might not know that Saya's first impulse when they were born was to kill the girls, but irregardless of this, he _does_ know that they're _Diva's_ babies, which means that they're not necessarily safe with Saya. Sort of like how cubs aren't safe when a new male takes over the lion pride.

"There's one more thing you have to remember, though: Hiroshi isn't human. His sense of morality _is_ fully developed and everything, but…shall we say…more acute that the human version. Plenty sharp, but narrow. I watch those charity commercials about the starving children in Africa and other places, and I feel nothing, Kai. Neither does he. Hiroshi would not hesitate to lay down his life for Akako, Aoko, or Saya. What he feels for me could range anywhere from genuine affection to wanting revenge for the time I bayoneted him attempting to assassinate George Washington."

"Um, were _you_ attempting to assassinate him, or was _he?_" Kai asked.

Nathan smiled. "I'll never tell. As I was saying, the rest of you, however, only matter as far as your relationships to Saya and the girls go. Outside of that, you're just so much chattel. Not to mention, he's operating more in what he believes to be their best interest than on what they actually want."

"How very paternal," Kai said dryly. "So, then, what's going to happen?"

"I don't know. I tell you one thing, though—I don't like the way that he sampled Haji's blood."

" 'Sample,' that's _one_ way of putting it," Kai was dry again. "Well, it's getting time for me to leave. See you later."

Kai got into his car and drove into town. Even with Nathan's warnings, it was hard to be on guard all the time. The scary thing was, that may have been part of Hiroshi's plan. After all, what was a day, a week, a month, or even a year to someone who has lived for centuries?

There was a red light at the next intersection, and Kai stopped the car. That is when the passenger door suddenly opened and someone got in. Kai, shocked, looked just as the door was slamming shut—and there was Hiroshi.

"Pulling a gun on you would be redundant, don't you think?" Hiroshi said. "Anyway, don't go for yours or else I might have to break your arm. Now, drive where I say."

"No," said Kai flatly.

"No?" Hiroshi asked. "This ain't optional, boyo."

"If you're going to kill me, you'll have to do it right here," Kai said bravely. "I'm not going to drive off to some secluded location so that you can take your dear sweet time killing me at your leisure."

"What do you think I am, some sort of serial killer?" Hiroshi asked.

"It's the rule. If someone with a weapon wants you to go somewhere, it's so that they can kill you slower," Kai explained.

"I have no intention of killing you, child. Now, drive, child, or I will knock you unconscious and drive you to my 'lair' myself. I'm not familiar with Japanese traffic laws, however, nor with driving on this side of the street. I won't _intentionally_ caus3e an accident, of course, but sometimes these things happen."

"Damn you," Kai said, knowing that Hiroshi had pushed the right buttons to make Kai drive where he wanted like a good little hostage. Hiroshi greeted damnation with a triumphant grin and directed Kai to his apartment.

-

Haji had spent the last couple of weeks being instructed by Nathan in ancient chiropteran lore. Saya also often listened in, and sometimes the others, but Nathan seemed to want to spend most of his time with Haji. Not exactly the mystery of the universe, that, but what was interesting was how Haji never blew a fuse and told him off. What _was_ interesting was how Haji never blew a fuse and told him off. Mao was sure that if some girl was hitting on her as much as Nathan was hitting on Haji, she'd have done just that. Was he too polite? Just plain cold enough and comfortable enough with his sexuality to be truly indifferent to Nathan's advances? Mao didn't _think_ that he bent that way, at least—especially with how devoted he was to Saya, so that even if he _did_ go both ways…

Nathan was finishing a lecture to Saya and Haji on teaching Aoko and Akako to have self-control so that they don't kill each other's chevaliers after climaxing (to be relayed to the girls on a _much_ later date, of course), and what they did to keep queens from dying in childbirth (it amounted to a primitive C-section, but chiropterans didn't get infections, so it was alright—Diva had been spared (that) death by modern medical science).

Mao, who had been listening because it was raining like cats and dogs outside and there was nothing better for her to do at the moment, shook her head. "No offense, Saya, but _damn!_ That is one _seriously_ messed-up species you come from! Not only does mating pretty much ensure death, but then there's all these chevaliers around with no more purpose for living."

"None taken," Saya said. She looked at her watch. "Shouldn't Kai be home by now?"

Three thoughts vied to be the first through Mao's head, and ended up a jumble: (1) _You _would_ notice,_ (2) _What business is it of yours, anyway?_ (3) _Stay the hell away from my man!_ The second thought though her head was, _Damn, Kai _is_ late!_ "I'll go call his boss." _I should have been the one to notice,_ she thought glumly as she called the number and then asked for him. Then she was informed that Kai had never arrived for work that morning, and what Mao had to say about _that_ drew everyone in the house. When she hung up, she unnecessarily clarified: "I think Kai is missing."

"So we gathered," said Haji, as they had all heard her yelling at Kai's boss.

"Hiroshi is behind this," Nathan said.

"What? Why didn't you do anything to stop this?" Mao demanded of the chevalier, forgetting that he could snap her like a twig if he chose.

"I didn't know. I _still_ don't understand why he would do this," Nathan said.

"Oh, no…do you think…Hiroshi has killed him in vengeance?" Mao asked, feeling small and weak for the first time in spite of the company she kept.

Nathan shook his head. "Hiroshi doesn't operate like that. He's not that sort of son of a bitch—he's a practical son of a bitch. Killing Kai would be petty, and he's not petty. He has some sort of purpose in all of this."

"Do you think he wants to ransom Kai in exchange for the girls?" David asked.

"It's possible," Nathan said. Then, taking to the idea, "Yeah, it's possible. After all, Kai is a human being, and, well, they're not. He'd think that you or Joel or _somebody_ would be willing to make that deal, or will you tell me I'm wrong?"

"You're not wrong," David said, though he sounded unhappy about admitting it.

"Besides, on some level, you making the deal would justify his taking the kids—after all, it would prove that you do have other concerns that at least match your concern for their wellbeing, whereas he doesn't," Nathan added. "Still, one would think that he'd leave some sort of note or something so that we could find him…of course! David, call Joel and tell him to run a search on flights between Japan and Eastern Europe during the days before our encounter with Hiroshi and his friend but after our encounter with Hiroshi himself. Look for round-trip tickets and pairs of one-ways, probably using an American passport."

"Eastern Europe?" David asked.

"Hiroshi's friend spoke Romanian—_real_ old Romanian, but Romanian," Nathan explained. "Also check that list against flights from wherever Joel is to here before our first encounter, and maybe from America to wherever Joel is before his encounter."

"Do you really think it will be that easy?" David asked skeptically.

"It will be if he wants us to find him," Nathan said. "Therefore, its either do this or sit here with our thumbs up—well, you know how the clichéd saying goes."

David got on the phone with Joel and told him what they needed. "He's doing it," David announced when he got off.

"What really bothers me is the weather," Nathan said. "He waited for a storm to be forecasted to pull this little stunt."

"How does it make any difference if this happens on a stormy day or a sunny day?" Saya asked.

"The difference is, it's dramatic," Nathan said. "The final battle always comes in a deluge in the movies. The thing is, drama's _my_ thing. His doing a thing like this feels like a howdy-do aimed at me…God, did I just say 'howdy-do'? Anyway, as I was saying, it feels aimed at me, but whether Hiroshi is mocking me or trying to tell me something, I don't know." Nathan shook his head. "Nothing about this latest caper seems to make sense to me."

Mao stood. She felt…numb, in shock. "I've…got to go…" She left, but Saya got up and followed her.

"Are you okay, Mao?" Saya asked.

And that was when Mao broke down and cried, putting Saya in an awkward position. "Please…you've got to save him. I love him."

"Of course I'm going to—"

"Anything you want is yours," Mao said, falling beyond reason in her grief, "just save him."

"Mao, I can't accept that—"

"You want him? He's yours! Just…save him…"

Well. Now this was _really_ awkward. "Mao. _Listen_ to me. Of _course_ I'm going to save him. Everything's going to be alright. I _promise_ you that."

Mao calmed down, and became embarrassed at herself. "What I just said, about you having him—"

"Forget it," Saya said. "I'm going to pretend you never made that offer." It kept her from having to answer it.

David called out: "Joel has found him! Hiroshi is using a passport under the name of Harry Takada, home town New York, New York, USA. Joel says the picture is a spitting image ouf our boy Hiroshi, and that he rented an apartment in town here."

"Well, as Sherlock Holmes would say, the game is afoot. Lets go! Take the kids with us—he _could_ be waiting to draw us out and leave Akako and Aoko behind, in which case the safest place would be with us. I will ask that the humans and minors stay in the car, however, and drive away once the action starts. Fast."

-

Several hours earlier, Hiroshi led he boy to his recently rented apartment. He hoped that Nathaniel and friendw were smart enough to find him—it would be awkward to have to bring the boy back to his home.

"What are you going to do to me?" Kai demanded.

Hiroshi shot the door behind him, locked it, and sprayed silk on it from his fingertips to be sure that the boy couldn't escape. "Well, don't get me wrong, you seem to be a nice, responsible boy and all, and Saya Junior seems to like you, but the thing is, you're human. And yes, humans are much freer with their altruism than we are, but still, I don't trust it—I'd feel better if you had a genetic stake in the girls' futures…and so, a compromise."

"What are you…oh." Kai's eyes widened with horrible realization.

Kai tried to run, but Hiroshi held him in place. "Come on, now, it's traditional for the next generation to be raised by their mother's vassals. Besides, I'm not _completely_ insensitive—if you like, we can preserve some of your seed so that you can still make babies with that human girlfriend of yours." Hiroshi produced a specimen cup and gestured at the bathroom. "Alright, here's the drill: either I can inject you with some of Diva's blood right now, or you can go into the bathroom for some alone time first and postpone the inevitable for a little while. Personally, if I were you, I'd go with the latter, as it would give Saya and the others some marginal hope of saving me before my eyes start glowing red, and even if they don't I could still have human children, but, like I said, the choice is yours. _I_ don't actually care. This is just a token gesture to me.

"Now, then, if you take the offer, here are the ground rules—you have two hours, starting…" Hiroshi looked at his watch, "…now. If you end early, you still have the rest of the two hours to lollygag or make some futile attempt at escape which I'll of course stop or whatever, and if it takes more than that, I'll come in and get you even though you're not done and too damn bad for your never-to-be children, because their daddy shouldn't have been trying to stall for time. I am trying to do something relatively nice for you, so I swear to God that if you fuck with me, I will break down the door and force Diva's blood down your throat while you've still got your pants down."

"If you _really_ want to do something nice for me, let me go," Kai quipped.

"I'm not _that_ nice," Hiroshi retorted. "Two hours no matter what. I make this rule so that you won't be sitting on the can trying to run out the clock. Telling you not to try to escape would be useless, so go ahead and make the attempt—you will fail. Now, then, what will it be? Shall we get down to business now or in two hours?"

Hiroshi thought that Kai would take the deal—after all, as he had said, those two hours were two more hours that his friends had in which to save him—but it honestly didn't matter to him. What mattered was that Hiroshi had made the offer, that he had in fact done everything in his power to make it work, and that Kai would remember that he had. And that, by extension, his being with Mao met with Hiroshi's approval, or at least his indifference—Hiroshi didn't want the boy to be thinking that he was doing this because he wanted him to make babies with Saya, after all.

Kai took the specimen jar and went into the bathroom, and Hiroshi turned the TV on to full volume in order to give him some semblance of privacy. When he came out, he put the jar in the freezer.

"Ah, good. Now, then, there are some things you need to know about being a vrykolake…" Hiroshi went into a lecture until his alarm went off. "And it is now time for you to join the ranks of the immortals, boyo." Kai bolted for the door. Hiroshi stopped him easily, holding both arms behind his back with one hand. "Honestly, Kai, did you think that would work? Humans do such _strange_ things when they're scared…" Hiroshi pulled a syringe of Diva's blood out of the freezer and injected Kai with it. Kai went into seizure and then passed out.

"There, there," Hiroshi said gently, carrying Kai to the bed and laying him out. "Being a vrykolake is not all bad. The devotion of vassal for queen…is a wonderful, horrible thing." He brushed a lock of hair from Kai's face in a fatherly gesture and then promptly forgot about him and watched TV.

Several hours later, his door was busted down, and there was Nathaniel, Saya Junior, and Haji. "We want Kai!" Saya demanded. It was storming outside, just as the weatherman had predicted.

"Of course, princess," Hiroshi said mock-paternally. "I'm done with him, anyway."

Saya forgot everything and ran to Kai, which would have been a very stupid thing to do if Hiroshi decided to attack…but of course, he didn't mean _her_ any harm. Still, it as a sign that she really cared for him. Hiroshi turned off the TV and went out the door. "_YOU!_ What did you _do_ to him?" Saya demanded.

"Oh, I managed to scrounge up some of Diva's blood, and, long story short, Kai is now one of us. I'll let him explain when he wakes up—I've been informed that I talk too much," Hiroshi said. Saya charged him, and so did the others. Hiroshi dodged all three blows and ended up in the middle of the street in the middle of the deluge. "Three against one? That's hardly fair! Then again, the one is me, so…" Hiroshi transformed. Like Haji's it wasn't much of a transformation—he grew monster arms out of his waist and wings out of his shoulders. Eight limbs and silk—once upon a time, they called him the spider. "Shall we begin? Or shall we end it? Nathaniel?"

"Yes. Two hundred years is too long to hold a grudge." Nathaniel said gravely, and transformed into his deceptively ridiculous-looking monster form, and when Saya nodded to Haji, he did the same.

Hiroshi couldn't help but to smile—Nathaniel had given just the answer he had hoped for. "One way or another, my work here is done, so that's fine with me."

And so the fight began. Hiroshi learned the hard way that Nathaniel had gotten better than him (or, probably more accurately, that _he_ had gotten _worse_ than Nathaniel) when Nathaniel was suddenly behind him, pinning two of his arms together. Saya and Haji both struck at him in that moment, double-impaling him. "Unfair! You said you and me, Nathaniel," Hiroshi complained.

"They have their own grievances against you, cousin," Nathaniel said.

Hiroshi kicked Haji across the street and into a building which collapsed on him, and gored Nathaniel with his free arms while he pulled free. Then he pulled Saya's sword from his abdomen while dodging another blow. "Come, now, Nathaniel! Our feud is older, and we must settle it first."

"Ah, but they have much more reason to want to run you into the sea than I do, Hiroshi," Nathaniel retorted.

"So that's the way it's going to be, then, and I can't talk you out of it?"

"That is the way it is going to be," Nathan confirmed gravely.

Saya and Haji ran at him, and as Hiroshi dodged, he was filled with an odd sort of paternal pride. How brave she was, to charge him unarmed, when he had her sword, in fact, when she couldn't even transform (for some reason). Granted, Hiroshi wouldn't hurt her if he could help it, but still, he doubted that that entered into her mental calculations. Hiroshi caught them both with his four arms, and hten used Haji's body to block Nathaniel's blow. Fighting three opponents at once, one of whom is better than you, while keeping track of his surroundings…for the first time in two centuries, Hiroshi was too busy to run at the mouth. Hell, he was almost too busy to breathe.

Nathaniel somehow got behind him (again!), grabbed him by the skull, and tossed him over several buildings (which wasn't very good for his neck). Hiroshi crashed and a second later jumped to his feet and then jumped into the air, where he took wing. Haji took to the air and took to the chase, the two combatants circling one another. Hiroshi suddenly dived on Haji, ramming him into the ground, or rather, into the sand, as they landed on the beach. Haji then tore into Hiroshi's gut with his claws and tried to wreak havoc on his innards, but Hiroshi stood quickly to dislodge Haji's arms. Nathaniel was already there, though, with Saya hitcing a ride on his back. She had already gotten off and picked up her sword, which Hiroshi had dropped, and if the blow Hiroshi dodged had connected, it would have taken his head clean off. He'd have to be _very_ careful if he didn't want to spend the rest of his days bodiless.

Nathaniel rammed him into a giant bolder and started punching him, but Hiroshi managed to wriggle out and jump several stories to the top of the rock before Haji and Saya Junior could join in on the abuse. Nathaniel jumped, too, though, and grabbed him, his continued momentum carrying them off the rock and into the sea. They struggled, holding their breath and wrestling as they rolled down the continental shelf, and then over the edge and into the abyss…


	5. epilogue

Thicker Than Water

**AN:** sorry this is so much later than the other chapters, but my computer _decided_ that it absolutely _had_ to fkn die on me, the cheap piece of garbage. (You know, I wanted chapter 4 to end in a cliffhanger—just not this one of one!) Well, here's the long-overdue conclusion…

Thicker Than Water

S-Michael

Epilogue

Mao was getting used to waking up alone. She walked out into the kitchen and found Kai. "Cooking breakfast, eh?" she asked as she walked into his arms and kissed him.

"yeah, well, I figured I might as well make myself useful, you know?" said Kai. "I can only spend so many hours a night watching you sleep, after all." He grinned self-deprecatingly at his new inhuman status.

"This would have been a useful skill for you to have back when Akako and Aoko were in diapers," Mao said. They made light of his inhuman condition as well as they could, pretending that it was no big deal, but… "Damn you, Hiroshi."

She must have said that last part aloud, for Kai wrapped his arms around her, saying, "There, there. I'm still me. We're still us. We even have a sample of my seed, for if we ever decide to have children of our own. I'm growing resigned to being a chiropteran. Everything will be alright."

But Mao knew that everything would _not_ be alright. Kai was no longer human. Kai was still Kai, yes, but he was a chiropteran version of Kai now. They would grow apart. She would grow old and die one day, and Kai would do nothing of the kind, so if nothing else, that would separate them—and that wasn't even the _worst_ part! Kai had hated Diva, the woman who had raped and murdered his brother, more than anything, and still did, of course, but now a part of him _longed_ for her…and that sickened him to the depth of his soul, sending him into spirals of self-hatred. He had tried to drink it away, in spite of the example David had set back when Red Shield had been out of commission, but his chiropteran biology didn't allow him to get more than tipsy even when he downed liters of vodka at a time. It was too efficient at destroying poisons. He had reminded himself that his new feelings were just biology, just like his inability to get trashed, but still, it was a new level of hell unimaginable to Mao. She did what she could for him, but it wasn't enough, and she knew that it wasn't enough. Damn that Hiroshi for doing this to Kai. May he jump in a fire and die, may demons torment him throughout the rest of his eternal life, may he be eaten alive by fire ants—may he be dead at the bottom of the ocean right now.

Kai went back to the food and dished out six plates. Saya came down from the guest bedroom, no doubt drawn by the smell of the food, and Haji, who had been reading in the living room, perhaps all night, came as well. The girls ran down the stairs and started shoveling their food into their mouths with their usual contempt for all things unhurried. They ate more than Saya did, and more often as well (_including_ blood transfusions)—something Mao had once thought was impossible. "Whoa, girls! Don't you want to at least _taste_ your food?" Kai asked. It was an old barb.

"No!" they shouted defiantly and in unison. Kai stuck his tongue out at them.

Saya shook her head in wonder. "I can't believe how smart they are," she said. She had been getting to know them, and was impressed by how they seemed to be smarter than the average five-year-old, much less one-year-olds.

"It's their rapid aging. It plays holy hell with their development," Kai said, and then winced, for he had forgotten that they now understood what swear words were. "They are smarter than most five year olds because their brains are growing at an accelerated pace, so there's a lot more room in there. It's sort of like how a computer with a large memory bank will run the same programs faster than a computer with a smaller one, or so Julia explained to me. There's a lot of empty space to be filled."

"I am not an airhead!" Aoko protested.

"She is, but I'm not," Akako added.

"Hey!"

"Girls, don't fight," Kai chided, and the girls shut up obediently. Mao sometimes wondered how things would have been different, how the history of the twentieth century itself would have been different, had only someone of told Saya and Diva not to fight, back when it would have done some good. There was a knock on the door. "Come in, David and Julia," Kai shouted.

It wasn't chiropteran powers that allowed him to know who it was—"They're becoming permanent features around here," Saya commented.

"Well, it's easier to study Aoko and Akako—and now myself—by being around them. Us," Kai said. "Anyway, as I was saying, Julia says it's like how software downloads faster when there's more free space on the computer, but their aging will slow and their minds will fill to proper capacity, and it ought to even out by the time they're 'adult.'"

"We're going to get stupid? Unfair!" Akako protested, as if she could make the universe take it back.

"Why are you saying we're going to get stupid?" Aoko demanded of Julia as if she just told them that there was no Santa Clause (though they figured as soon as they first heard of Santa Clause that he wasn't real—Aoko said that giving gifts to everyone in the world wasn't economically feasible).

"You're not going to get stupid," Julia assured them. "Just…normal."

"What's the difference?" Akako asked.

"Akako," Kai warned.

"Any word an Nathan or Hiroshi?" David asked.

"Nothing," Kai said. "If he was going to get into touch with us, I would think he would have by now."

"I suspect that we wouldn't get any word of anything no matter what happened after they fell into the sea," David said.

"How so?" Mao asked.

"Well, remember that Nathan already faked his own death once, so the fight would be the perfect excuse for him to disappear like this, provided he won, and as for Hiroshi, if _he_ won…well, he already got what he wanted, or enough of it to satisfy him. If he won, he'd just leave—after all, it's not like any of us would want to wish him a fond farewell. And, of course, there's always the possibility that they're _both_ dead."

Mao nodded, as what David said made sense. She devoutly holed that Hiroshi was dead down there. The bastard turned Kai into an inhuman monster, and for what? Because he didn't trust that Kai would do absolutely anything to protect the girls if he were not of the same flesh as they. Mao didn't know what was worse—the fact that Hiroshi did do this or the fact that it wasn't even necessary. The girls were everything to Kai.

"You know, Mao, I've been thinking…with Kai the way he is, he's never going to grow old, and, well, with you the way you are, you will, and so, if you wanted to…I could give you some of my blood," Saya said.

"A female chevalier? Is that even possible?" Mao asked.

"Amshel did some experiments, and it turned out that yes, it was, but they became sterile," David said. "Apparently, Diva didn't like having them around, and so she ordered them killed."

"…Kai, what do you think I should do?"

"It's your decision and all, but…don't do it, Mao. Just because I'm a mon—" he stopped, as the girls were listening, and one day they would have chevaliers, and no parent ever wants to make their child feel like a monster. "Just because I am the way I am doesn't mean you should be, too. Besides, who knows what will happen if you become Saya's chevalier? You might not be all that interested in me any more, if you catch my drift."

"There's a pleasant thought," Mao said dryly. "In all seriousness, though, I was going to say no, anyway—I just wanted to see if you agreed with me. Thanks anyway, Saya."

-

Van Argeno's mouth dropped when he saw the table that had been reserved for him. He had expected to see Hiroshi…but Nathan was here, as well.

"Ah, Mr. Newman, come, sit," Hiroshi said—in French. Argeno shouldn't have been surprised, as the next chiropteran he met who wasn't a panlinguist would be the first. Argeno came and sat, Newman being the fake name he was using.

"Surprised to see me?" asked Nathan, also in French. Nathan's accent was flawless Parisian, where Hiroshi's was Quebecois.

"Well, yes," Argeno admitted. "Were you two…in on this together the whole time?"

"Oh, heavens, no!" Hiroshi said. "I figured, though, that after I accomplished my secondary objective, I'd want to disappear, and, there being no reason for him to hang around any more, so would he, and so if I could somehow get a subtle hint across… You know, for a while there, I thought you didn't get the hint. Why didn't you just chase me off like I planned?"

"Hiroshi my friend, you are a very blunt person. What wonders learning the art of subtlety would do for your life, I can only imagine, but that is beside the point. The point in this case is that chasing you off would not have been dramatic. Don't you know anything? The final fight scene of the story is _always_ the most epic. It would have been a waste of the scenery that you were so kind as to wait for." Nathan chuckled. " 'Subtle hint,' eh? The storm in said final epic battle is the biggest cliches of all time. For shame."

"Why did you go along with it, though?" Argeno asked.

Nathan shrugged. "Kai was already one of us, and killing Hiroshi wasn't going to change Kai back, after all, so as long as Hiroshi was leaving never to return anyway, what would the point have been? I mean, sure, Saya and Haji were out for blood, but I'm a more practical creature, I like to think. Besides, on some level, he _is_ right. Some of the stuff the girls are going to go through, it will take a chiropteran to understand. This is a good compromise, I think. Oh, and by the way, Hiroshi, that bit with letting him preserve some of his semen was a nice touch."

"I don't want them thinking that I turned Kai into a vrykolake because I want him to make babies with Saya, after all," Hiroshi said.

"Of course you don't want them to think that—the reason being that that's _exactly_ what you want to happen," Nathan said. "Although, with how much he hates Diva, becoming her last chevalier might drive him to madness."

Hiroshi shrugged. "It's a risk, but he's a tough kid. He'll shift the focus of his desire to Saya, or concentrate on raising the girls, or hell, even focusing on Mao would be alright with me—after all, she only has such a short time left to live in this world—six, eight decades, tops. Worst case scenario, Kai stays with Mao until she dies, and _then_ he'll be all Saya's."

"How very machiavellian of you," Nathan opined admiring.

"I don't understand why Machiavelli has such a bad rap," Hiroshi shrugged. "Humans. No matter. The question we're here to address is, what do we do next?"

"What do you mean?" Argeno asked.

"There's a reason Vlad isn't here, and it's not that he's not a daywalker, or even that he won't like taking orders from me if and when he gets his mojo back. It's that he's not of our blood, and so his loyalty might be divided. There may be other threats to our happy little family, after all. Who says Saya's body was the only pregnant corpse to exist? Yes, being daywalkers helped Saya and Diva to survive when other bloodlines would have died pointlessly the first time they were innocently exposed to daylight, but it's sill not impossible. Even without that spectacular threat, there's always remnants such as ourselves, vassals without a queen, and who knows what convoluted plots they have in store for that family? It's just lucky that _I_ found them first."

"Oh, you weren't the first. You're just the first one who got by me," Nathan said.

"What, but…Joel never encountered another one of us aside from Diva's and Saya's flock, I'm sure of it," Hiroshi said.

"Well, likely he didn't—after all, you are rather direct. And yet a few _did_ beat you to the punch, and I disposed of them quietly. See what I mean about the virtues of subtlety?" Nathan chided. "Anyway, yes, of course I'll protect Saya Junior and the girls.

"Am I correct in assuming that I don't actually have a choice in whether or not to join this venture?" Argeno asked.

"You are," Hiroshi confirmed. "Don't feel bad, though—the pay is good, and immortality is just a request away."

"You know, Hiroshi, I bet that this whole thing would have gone better if you had tried to reason with them."

"Shoulda woulda coulda," Hiroshi retorted. "I thought it would be quicker to just nab the kids and go, but then you and Haji showed up and tossed a monkey wrench into my plans. Ah, well—things turned out well enough as they are."

"God, Hiroshi—you are _such_ a blunt instrument," Nathan said bemusedly.

"Yes, but I am also sharp."

Nathan did a double take. "Was that a _pun?_ Since when do you tell jokes?"

FIN

**Author's Commentary:**

Someone asked me if Vlad was Dracula. Well, at first he was, but then I decided that he was too sucky a character to portray Dracula, and then I decided that even for Dracula there might be limits to his ability to cope, and in the end, I decided to just let the reader decide whether or not Vlad is Dracula. I figured that the references to (the real) Dracula would go over most people's heads, anyway, in spite of being in some cases none too subtle.

Now, then, on to the girls. For their names, I used the InuYasha School of Naming (InuYasha (the title character of _InuYasha_) is a dog demon; _inu_ is Japanese for "dog" and _yasha_ is a type of demon): _aka_ means "red," _ao_ means "blue," and _ko_ means "child." "Akako," at least, is a real name, but I had to cheat for Aoka. Her name had almost been "Midori"—Green. Now for what people probably actually want to know: what was the deal with the speed-aging? Well, I wanted the story to take place as close to the time of Saya's going to sleep as I could get it, but I also didn't want to run against canon. The girls were five when they went to see Saya's grave, and it would be stupid for her to go to sleep again when she didn't have to. Besides, I wanted to have some manifest example of how Saya and Diva were damaged by their, shall we say, stasis. It's a well-established gimmick, so I figured, why not?

The whole daywalker thing wasn't a gimmick, though. Well, technically it is, but that's not what I used it for. The simple fact of the matter is, even in the nonsense-science of chiropteran biology, there is no reason for the Schiff to burst into flames when the sun light touches them. There is simply no reason for it, and so I created a reason for it. I wasn't even planning it from the beginning—after all, the Greek vrykolake, which is what Hiroshi calls chiropterans, is one of the few vampires of mythology who can be up and about in broad daylight.

Speaking of Hiroshi, he actually had a long road to get here. Originally, he was to be a character in a sequel to an AU story in which Riku is kidnapped by Diva instead of murdered by her, and then serial raped until he escapes. The sequel would have picked up after Riku escaped and had amnesia and was found by Hiroshi, who was a more sympathetic character back in that stage of development.

The problem with this was that I anticipated writing the sequel more than I did the prequel, and that didn't work out well—after all, how well do you do something when you want to be doing something else? And so, the story was scrapped.

Another AU incarnation of Hiroshi would have been a story where he tracked down Red Shield before the aforementioned rape and murder of Riku and tries to force Saya and Diva to make up, which he does by tying them up and forcing them to share a room. It's not as funny as it sounds. I actually decided to start doing this one after I had started writing this story, but quickly gave up on it. I had decided while writing this story that it would have been nice to do a version where more of the characters were, you know, _not_ dead, but while I was actually writing it I decided that I didn't like that version of Hiroshi.

Even though he had many of the same character flaws as this incarnation of the character (stubborness, lack of any sort of real empathy for others (for instance, he arrives in time to stop the rape of Riku, but decides to wait and only save him from being murdered, as he wants Diva to have children), ruthlessness, et all) and threatens to start murdering Saya's loved ones and Diva's chevaliers if they _don't_ learn to "play nice" besides, something just bugged me about his character. I can't really describe it—I want to say that he struck me as being a bit on the Stu side, except that I can't say exactly why as that doesn't really apply to villains. The closest I think I can come is to say that villains are supposed to be kick-ass in order to glorify the heroes who struggle to defeat them, and it seemed that Hiroshi was being glorified with in his struggles to take on the entire cast—and that's another thing: it seemed to be a little much to have him be able to take on _all_ of Diva's chevaliers (who weren't about to let their queen get kidnapped) and Red Shield (who won't want Saya kidnapped or Diva alive) at the same time.

That's one problem I don't have to deal with in this story: it takes place after the end of the series, beyond any hope of reconciliation. With Diva dead, that frees Hiroshi up to be the main antagonist, not to mention freeing him from having to put his jackboot down on a whole host of chiropterans, which would require him to have some ridiculously awesome abilities. (He can still take Haji on one-on-one with apparent ease, but come on—he's older, wiser, and knows more dirty tricks than Haji.) Perhaps I will find some way to fix the other story, but don't take that as a promise or anything.

I probably won't write anything any time soon—after all, I'm breaking my self-imposed exile just to write this (and looking at the non-existent reviews, I'm forced to ask myself why did I bother?), and really, I ought to finish _The First Generation_ before starting another project.

Well, that is what it is. Do you honestly need my prodding to R&R? Apparently, because you're not doing it! You know, I wrote a fic in _Artemis Fowl_ that didn't get any reviews, and I haven't written another _Artemis Fowl_ fic yet…


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